US markets end higher on Thursday

20 Dec 2019 Evaluate

The US markets ended at record highs again on Thursday as investors looked past the news of President Donald Trump’s impeachment by the House as well as mixed US economic data. The Democrat-led House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump became only the third president to be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors and will now face a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate. However, markets have largely shrugged off impeachment news as the chances of a trial conviction in the Senate are low. Because of this, the market’s performance during Trump’s impeachment process is tracking that of the time when former President Bill Clinton was impeached.

On the economic data front, after reporting a significant increase in first-time claims for US unemployment benefits in the previous week, the Labor Department released a report showing initial jobless claims pulled back in the week ended December 14. The report said initial jobless claims fell to 234,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 252,000. Street had expected jobless claims to drop to 225,000. Meanwhile, a report released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed a much bigger than expected pullback in US existing home sales in the month of November. NAR said existing home sales tumbled by 1.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.35 million in November after jumping by 1.5 percent to a revised 5.44 million in October. Street had expected existing home sales to dip by 0.4 percent to a rate of 5.44 million from the 5.46 million originally reported for the previous month.

Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 137.68 points or 0.49 percent to 28376.96, Nasdaq gained 59.48 points or 0.67 percent to 8887.22 and S&P 500 was up by 14.23 points or 0.45 percent to 3205.37.

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